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Secondary Hurt: Can the Packers Survive Atlanta?

Another tough game for the Green Bay Packers, but this time it is a bit of a stretch to try and blame this one on Aaron Rodgers, as the very close game was lost more so because of defense more so than any decisions Rodgers made.

Aaron Rodgers has felt the heat up one side and down the other. The Green Bay Packers quarterback, criticized so often this season and over the summer too, put up no less than 32 points and gave his team a six-point lead at the end of the game with less than four minutes to go and still went home a loser, but he wasn’t the one at fault this time.

This one really is on the shoulders of the Packers’ defense. Rodgers and the offense took the lead with a masterful drive of no less than 13 plays, 86 yards over 8:33. What did it come down to though? Injury, injury, injury. No matter how hard the Packers’ defense tried it didn’t matter because the Falcons exposed the Packers’ short-handed defense. The Packers’ defense hasn’t been able to overcome the losses of their top three cornerbacks to injury, and it showed when they faulted to the Falcons.

One of the Packers defensive tackles, Mike Daniels, was available for comment on those last few precious minutes of the game:

“A good number of us are playing because we were the young backup that had to play because of injury, so it’s next man up. Those guys, I think they did a good job. I think they did a good job overall. But when you’re playing a good offense like that, just doing enough is not enough. You’ve got to go above and beyond and us veterans are supposed to take that thing by the horns and do that.”

It’s hard to give the team a really hard time about a game that was well played almost the entire game. But the fact of the matter is, the team is struggling and badly too. The team is struggling quite a bit with so many veteran players out with injuries of one kind or the other. The major concern here is what on earth can be done to stop these players from continually injuring themselves time and time again and over and over again too. For some reason, it would appear that this year the Packers is having a strange tendency to really struggle a lot and with a lot of injuries too amongst players on all corners and positions of the field. Bad luck for them, bad luck indeed.

Here’s what quarterback Aaron Rodgers had to say about the loss:

“Personally, I’m just really proud of those guys who made plays today. We got Jordy going early with the big completion, but we had three touchdown passes — one each to Geronimo Allison, who wasn’t on the opening-day roster, to Trevor, who’s had limited opportunities, and Jeff Janis for the go-ahead touchdown. I’m just so proud of those guys and the way they battled. We wasted a couple drives in the third quarter after a really nice first half. The opening drive of the third quarter would have been a momentum-shifter, for sure, if we had been able to put points on the board.”

All concerns aside, the Packers still played a great game. It was a small slip up that lost them the game, it wasn’t like they were completely trounced or anything. Hopes are high for the next few games, because they are up against some teams that have had far more difficult of seasons than the Packers have had.